Transgendered...six-year-olds?

NPR, amazingly, did a story--actually part one of a two-part series--on young children with gender identity issues. Two six-year-olds, born boys, who at a very young age identified as female.

Of course, I have a wee bit of a problem with the discussion at this point, when it starts to sound like these kids are just playing with dolls and their parents are freaking out, but it turns out that's not the case. Both sets of parents, from the beginning, bought their kids whatever toys they wanted, "girl" toys notwithstanding.

One set of parents, though, decided it was a problem when their 'son' didn't just want to play with dolls, she wanted to be referred to as a girl, and she wanted dresses. So they bought her dresses, but they decided to see a professional, just in case. Thankfully, this family lived in California and found an awesome therapist, Diane Ehrensaft, who encouraged them to let their child live as she wanted to, to refer to her as a her, and to refer to her as transgender, not as "gender identity disordered."

The other family let it go until their child came home one day with a gash on his head from being assaulted on the playground for playing with Barbie. They ended up going to this guy. (Coincidentally, Belledame had this post up just today.) He, of course, convinced them that they should 'train' their son to be a 'boy.' And of course being a boy means not wearing pink, not playing with dolls, playing only with other boys. And it makes the poor kid miserable.

It nearly moved me to tears when the mother described asking her child, who doesn't want to play with the "boy toys" they bought, to draw a boy instead of the girls and rainbows that he draws. He says, "I don't know how to draw a boy," and I nearly started to cry at the dog park.

Gender patterning has infuriated me for a while. I ran my family's bicycle business for three years before heading back to school, and most of our business came from rentals. You can't get a gender-neutral little kids' bike--they're either pink or blue, either girly as hell or super-boyish. But our adult bikes (and even our larger kids' bikes) were all black, yet grown men would still freak out about them being "girls' bikes" because they had the sloping top tube rather than the straight bar. And just imagine what happens when the only kids' bike we had left was the wrong color...oh, no, we can't have that!

So it should go without saying that I was annoyed first by the definition of "girl" and "boy" being limited to pink and blue, and then by this shrink who thinks he can train this child out of thinks he enjoys doing and turn him into a "proper boy" who plays with trucks--and probably becomes exactly the kind of boy who cracks other boys on the head for playing with dolls.

This guy's excuse is that you can't be transgender at that age, that kids' gender identities are fluid, and that therefore the kid can't possibly know his own mind.

Yeah, but what the hell is wrong with the kid being happy? They're not signing him up for sex reassignment surgery just yet, they're just letting him play with the toys he wants and wear the clothes he wants.

The child whose parents let her live as she wants to is happy, well-adjusted, and the most popular kid in school.

The child whose parents force him to be a boy (and have now convinced him that he wants to be a boy, hence my use of the male pronoun) is not happy. He has "a few male friends" but his mother admits that she thinks he's living a split identity.

How the hell is that good for your kid?

Sure, kids can be cruel and they like things defined rigidly and tend to mistreat kids that don't fit their assigned roles. I could tell you tons of stories of things I dealt with when the rumor went around my elementary school that my friend and I were lesbians.

But if your child is happy, as Ehrensaft said, why put her in therapy? When she's depressed and confused, then maybe the time for therapy has come, but if she knows what she wants and is happy with it, why is it so damn important that your kid be forced to play with gendered toys and dress in gendered clothes?

Maybe this kid will grow out of this. Maybe she will live the rest of her life as a girl and never have surgery. Maybe she'll surgically transition. But of all the horrible things that could happen to a child out there, this is hardly one of them.

I was impressed with NPR's coverage, though, except for the reporter's tendency to refer to the child living as female, whose parents use "her" and "she," as "him." On the whole, I thought it was an evenhanded, thoughtful story and they were quite forthright with saying that the child living as female was clearly happier.

Tomorrow is going to be the second part of this series. I'll have to download it.

(Cross-posted at Season of the Bitch)